David Brian Mathews - Panda3D 1.6 Game Engine Beginner’s Guide
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This book is a step-by-step, tutorial-driven guide to game or application development using Panda3D that follows the process used in professional development. You will learn through first-hand experience how a Panda3D developer goes from literally nothing to a finished product. Along the way there are illustrations to explain difficult topics and to display the results of progress, as well as a complete archive of thoroughly explained code for every tutorial. Every single code file the reader saves is mirrored in the example code, finished and explained. In addition, every art and audio asset required by the tutorials is provided, so the user need not provide any assets of their own. If you are an independent developer interested in creating your own video games or other 3D applications using Panda3D for personal or commercial distribution at minimal expense, this book is definitely for you. A basic understanding of general programming, such as familiarity with the concept of a variable, is necessary. Some familiarity with object-oriented programming and the Python language is expected, but not essential. This book does not cover the creation of three dimensional models or similar art assets, nor does it cover the creation of two dimensional art assets or audio assets.
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About the AuthorDavid Brian Mathews David Brian Mathews is a graduate in Electronic Visualization program from the University of Illinois at Chicago. He began programming in the fifth grade with QBASIC and has been designing games of various kinds, from table-top board games to computer games, since childhood. Prior to entering higher education, he served for two years in the United States Navy as a nuclear engineer before being honorably discharged for medical reasons, where he learned discipline, advanced mathematics, and nuclear theory, as well as teamwork and leadership skills. During his years in school, Mathews earned valuable experience with professional game development methods working both by himself and with teams. He is skilled at programming, 3D modeling and animation, drawing, and 2D compositing.
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This appendix is all about creating sky spheres to use as backdrops in Panda3D games.
We'll hit these topics:
- Learning Spacescape basics
- Blending layers
- Using point stars and billboard stars
- Creating a sky sphere from a skybox made with Spacescape
Spacescape creates skyboxes full of nebulas and stars. A skybox is a set of six images that, when arranged properly and folded into a cube, will seamlessly blend together along the edges of the cube.
Skyboxes see extensive use in 3D video games where they serve as the backdrop that encapsulates the world. The real trouble with skyboxes is getting them; they're difficult to paint by hand, they take fancy camera work and compositing to create from real world scenery, and it's hard to find quality skyboxes for free on the Internet.
Thankfully, Spacescape allows us to create our own skyboxes, though it does specialize in night time or outer space views. With it, we can create complex, intricate, and beautiful backdrops for use in our games.
Spacescape uses a system of layers to work its magic. We create layers, adjust their settings, and stack them on top of each other until we get a rich, complex tapestry of stars and nebulas.
There are three kinds of layers in Spacescape: noise, point stars, and billboard stars. Noise layers create cloud-like patterns that vary between two colors, and are used to create the colored nebulas and also to create masks that limit the visibility of other layers. Point star layers create distributions of simple points and are used for basic stars. Billboard star layers are similar to point star layers, except instead of just creating a simple point of color they place an image. Both point star and billboard star layers can be given their own masks, which only affect that layer, to limit where they appear.
To get a basic understanding of how to use Spacescape, let's create a simple nebula with some stars in it.
- Double-click the
Spacescape.exefile in theSpacescapefolder to start the program. When the program starts, a screen similar to the following screenshot comes up:
- Click on the New Layer button to introduce a new layer to the scene, and then click on the plus icon to the left of the new layer. This will open the settings for that layer. The second item on the list, Layer Type , is currently set to points . Click on the word points to get a drop-down box of options and then select the noise option.
- This changes the available settings for the layer, and instead of seeing white dots in our preview we now see a gray cloud. Without worrying about what they all mean exactly, we're going to edit some of the values for this layer.
- Click on the values to the right of the Inner Colour setting and a button with an ellipses(. ... ) on it will appear on the right-hand side of those values. Click on that button to open the color picker, and choose the purple color at the bottom-left of the Basic Colours section.
- Next, change the Lacunarity from 2.000 to 2.200 .
- Change the Octaves to .
- Change the Power to 1.200 .
- Change the Threshold to .450 .
- Now, we have a dark purple cloud with a bit of graininess to it that looks sort of like a nebula. Let's go ahead and throw in some stars as well. Click on the New Layer button again.
- Click on the plus icon next to the new layer to open its options. Click on the values for the Near Colour and open the color picker again. Choose the same purple, but adjust the Sat down to and then click on the OK button.
We've got a decent start going there, and we've seen the basic premise behind Spacescape: layers of noise and stars. Before we start getting more complicated, though, we should talk about the noise layers and their controls.
The noise layers are generated by adding a series of noise functions together. These noise functions use wave-forms to produce a value between 0 and 1 for each pixel, and that value determines the mix of the inner and outer color for the pixel. A value of 0 means pure outer color, and a value of 1 means pure inner color. A value of .5 would be halfway in between the two.
There are two types of noises to choose from: fbm and ridged. Fbm noise creates a smoother, more cloud noise. Ridged noise contains ridges that resemble tendrils or electricity.
There are three settings that control the basic wave-form: octaves, gain, and lacunarity.
- Lacunarity: Controls the size of the "major" regions in the noise. Higher values produce smaller, more numerous regions. Typically, this value is kept fairly close to
2. - Gain: Controls the grittiness, or roughness, of the "major" regions. Higher values will produce rougher regions. This value is usually set between
0and1. - Octaves: Controls the number of additive noise functions that are used. This value effectively multiplies the lacunarity and gain. Usually 4 to 8 octaves are used. If this value is less than
2, gain and lacunarity will have no effect.
We have two settings that let us control the distribution of the noise value after it has been generated by the wave-form: power and threshold.
- Threshold: This setting creates a lower limit for the noise value. Essentially, the noise value in each pixel is reduced by the threshold. This value needs to remain between
0and1. - Power: This setting is an amplifier for the noise value, and it is applied after the threshold. Essentially, a higher power will push the noise values that remain toward
1, the inner color. Noise values of0are not affected by power.
There are three remaining settings for noise that we haven't talked about yet. They are noise scale, noise offset, and random seed.
- Noise scale: Adjusts the initial coordinates for the noise. It's difficult to predict exactly how this will affect the result, but that doesn't mean it's useless. We'll use noise scale to produce variation in noise layers we've copied.
- Noise offset: This setting is only used by ridged noise. It controls the contrast of the ridges. A value of
.5results in a flat mix of the inner and outer colors, and a value of1allows the ridges to reach the pure inner color. Overdriving this value beyond1will force more of the ridges to the pure inner color, which can look pretty ugly. Values between
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